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Very good powerhead. I use a Aquaclear 70 model to mix water for my saltwater reef tank. A Hydor Koralia is a better choice however these are still good powerheads. The reverse flow feature is a very nice plus.

Easy to install, clean and maintain. Lots of room for extra media like polishing floss or ph buffering agents like peat or crushed coral. Simple to use and I would suggest this filter for any newbie. I like to have 3 to 4 times the suggested filtration for my tanks and the AQ filter box sizes and shapes allow me to do that easily.

------------------------------Wendy :-)

ILuvMyGoldBarbMarine Tank Addict

Registered: February 2008Posts: 10335

Review Date: Wed November 5, 2008

Would you recommend the product? No |
Price you paid?: None indicated
| Rating: 2

Positive aspects of the product (pros):

Moves a lot of water

Cons:

poorly designed intake strainer, poorly designed impeller shaft.

The design of the intake strainer on this absolutely terrible. If you use this powerhead in a tank without the prefilter attachment installed you run a very high risk of loosing livestock. The impeller design is not very good either. There is a plastic piece that acts as a cog to keep the magnetic drum and the blades spinning together, this cog wears out before the rest of the impeller does and makes the powerhead very noisey. I use it in my mixing/top-off tank as that is the only safe place for it. Big thumbs down for this Hagen product.

I am using the AC70 powerhead with the quickfilter attachment for added mechanical filtration in my 220 gallon freshwater tank. Dead quiet. Great flow. Good options to turn down the flow and to even reverse the flow if needed. It is a little larger than the competition but in my application that hardly matters. The quickfilter attachment will be reviewed separately.

quiet, easy to set up, easy to clean, lots of room for extra media packs

Cons:

lets some water by without being filtered on full flow if the tray is not installed perfectly

I have an aquaclear 50 on my 29 gallon swordtail tank, it keeps the water fairly clear with minimal noise and current output. The flow features are cool, but I hardly notice a difference between full flow and minimal flow. Still not bad for the price, but I will be researching other brands.

These aquaclear model powerheads are pretty good for entry level setups. Larger models can cause excess heat. They do pump out a decent amount of flow but it doesn't take much to clog the impeller, especially in planted tanks. The venturi is pretty adjustable and comes in handy. They are a bit bulky but i would recommend then for low tech tanks that need added flow and added oxygen.

I run two AC50s in my river tank using a manifold system. They work very well to push a lot of water. Because this tank is cold water in a cool area of the house, any heat put off by the pumps is nominal. The attachment to hang this powerhead off the side of the tank is very flimsy and probably only usable if attached to a UGF to prop it up. Advertised as adjustable flow rate. Really it only has two settings. High and not so high.